III.

Louis XVI’s Early Reign

On May 10, 1774, the 20-year-old Louis XVI became king upon the death of his grandfather. In contrast to the weakness and indulgence of Louis XV, the new king appeared virtuous and gauche, and benefited from a wave of sympathy and affection not normal during the first years of a reign. However, on Louis's accession, France was impoverished and burdened with debts, and heavy taxation had resulted in widespread misery among the French people. Determined to make a break with the past, Louis, under the influence of the Mesdames Tantes, recalled as ministerial adviser the experienced Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux, Comte de Maurepas, who had been disgraced and exiled in 1749 for an epigram against the Marquise de Pompadour, but who would remain at Louis’s side until his death in 1781. He dismissed both the chancellor, René de Maupeou, whose attempts at fiscal reform under Louis XV had signalled the failure of “enlightened despotism” in France, and Joseph Marie Terray, the comptroller-general of finance (finance minister). Both had been the principal movers of the idea of modernization. In their place he appointed Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de l'Aulne, as finance minister, Chrétien Guillaume de Lamoignon de Malesherbes as interior minister, and Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes, as foreign minister.

Aided by such capable statesmen, Louis remitted some of the most oppressive taxes and instituted financial and judicial reforms. Greater reforms, including the taxation of the nobility, the abolition of feudal labour laws, and the suppression of commercial monopolies, were proposed by Turgot in his famous Six Edicts to the Royal Council. However, these changes were prevented by the opposition of the court and the nobility (represented by the various French parlements, or sovereign courts), and so strong was this opposition that in 1776 Turgot was forced to resign. Louis replaced him with the financier, Jacques Necker.

Necker opposed the free trade policies instituted by Turgot, and introduced a number of financial reforms, including a more equitable system of taxation, a plan for the funding of the national debt, and the abolition of the multiple obstacles to agriculture and trade. In 1781 he completed the Compte rendu au Roi (Report to the King), a comprehensive analysis of the national finances. However, Necker’s description of the exact state of the nation’s parlous finances, and his proposals for drastic taxes on the nobility to rectify this, led Louis, who disapproved of his Protestantism and his suggestion that Marie Antoinette limit court extravagance, to dismiss Necker later that year.